Tens of millions of Queen fans around the world never got to see the classic line-up live, due to the tragic illness and death of rock’s greatest front man, Freddie Mercury, who left us 24th November 1991 at the age of 45. To help assuage that absence and loss, Martin Popoff, author of Queen: Album by Album, has assembled Queen Live! to document the band’s all too brief and precious touring history. Throughout the course of the resulting action-packed symphony of live photography and memorabilia, every known gig is touched down upon, with myriad bits of trivia among the way, including wrinkles in the set list, on-stage mishaps, wardrobe quirks, day-of-show and after-show hijinks and, most amusingly, what goofy things Freddie might have said to the crowd on any given night. There’s a three-stage narrative flow as well, with chapters emerging that frame the band pre-debut, 1970 to 1973, and then as a regular working band—mere mortals even—playing venues and package gigs just like everybody else, working hard through the late seventies. As we roll into the 1980s, the itinerary gets lighter and each show becomes more special, with the band finally bowing out on 9th August 1986 with a massive multi-band bash at Knebworth Park. If you were at one or more of these shows, Queen Live! will serve as the ultimate tour program-type memento of those magic days. And if you weren’t, this book goes a long way toward putting you in that hallowed space, watching what one of the most talented bands in the world could deliver night after night, year after year until the bitter end, fully five years before Freddie’s death finally closed the book on this most eminent of British institutions.
